Quite dramatic and deservedly so given that people are not only waking up but speaking up. Repeatedly, and most disturbingly with my own daughter, I've run into the "moral clarity" of the woke, who just won't discuss certain issues, in our case, the belief that men can actually become women. And yet how to blame her when none of our institutions, especially not the CBC or the university she attended, will ever discuss this foundational belief of the modern trans rights movement. It's considered not only a physical given, but a moral imperative. The same goes for a number of serious issues that once would have brought people together but which now divide them. Here's to a saner future for Canada.
I am not sure how to respond, as I share many of the sediments expressed by Stephen, but also would observe some profound places I do not agree. Trish Wood has started to used the expression "Truth not Tribe" which rings true for me.
I agree with Stephen with respect to wanting people to leave their politics at the boarder, but would observe that the worst offenders in this regard are Zionists, as they are unable to distinguish between Canadian interests, and Israel's interests. They have a complete disregard for the truth, and endlessly repeat things that have been proven to be untrue. In his article he makes references to Ms. Jama and Hamas. I would like to point out the following to Stephen.
1. If Hamas are rapists, then you can kill them. Right? What happens if they are not rapists? Does Stephen know that the Israeli media has raised questions about this, after families of victims have come forward to say their love ones were not raped. I would suggest that he research this.
2. Does Stephen understand that the way that you justify a genocide is to dehumanize the people you want to kill? I suggest that he look in history at genocides and the language used to justify the killing. I suggest that he then compare that language with the language being used today with respect to Palestinians.
The Intercept has just published a piece about the untrue narratives being promoted by the Government of Israel. It includes a section on how the allegations of rape against Hamas are being used to hype up emotion, but cannot be substantiated.
Disappointed that the pushback against woke ideological extremism is being conflated with advocacy of current Israeli war policy. Many of the staunchest critics of the turn to the far right in Israel are themselves Jewish, like Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté of The Grayzone, leading protestor Lesley J Wood and Naomi Klein who has spoken out on her behalf. You don’t have to agree with all their criticisms to defend their right to be heard. Hamas atrocities are very real but it’s clear that the Netanyahu government are seizing on the crisis to further a longstanding goal of the far right: ethnic cleansing of Gaza and acceleration of settlements in the West Bank, towards a biblical vision of a “Greater Israel”.
This is a very optimistic take that I love to see - my worry is that while the culture at large (and as Marche points out, youth culture in particular) takes a turn away from identity politics, I worry that it will take many years for institutions to catch up.
The current mainstream brand of wokeness was very popular in university life in the 2000s and 2010s. It took about 10 years to reach the mainstream (which was brought on, in large part, by people on these campuses becoming professors and thought leaders in academia). The antisemitism of these people is also reflected clearly in the current leftie discourse around the conflict in Gaza. Will it take 10 years to drain the poison from Canadian institutions? The CBC is one thing, but what about every office that has hired a DEI executive officer or pays hundreds of thousands for quarterly anti-racism trainings, delivered by people who think that harassing Canadian Jews is freedom fighting? I worry that the after effects of these decisions will be felt for a long time, but I hope I’m wrong.
In the meantime, it would be great if Canadian businesses and institutions who are sick and tired of these toxic narratives would take a more public stand on these issues that would translate to hiring sane people who care about building things rather than tearing them down. It feels like a lot of talented, young people are passed over for jobs while the people that are hired in their stead take great pleasure in destroying everything in their path in the name of righteousness. Perhaps moral character should be a consideration in candidate selection.
Thank you for an excellent article that truly gives me hope after the last five despairing years! I am shocked so many baby boomers continue to support the liberals. I am a baby boomer and have had to be very careful around many of my friends who continue to vote liberal. It's a head shaker indeed.
Love this article! Most of our institutions and corporations embraced identity politics because they thought that virtue signaling would pay off. It is becoming evident that this is not the case long term and that most people are fed up with this negative and divisive way of thinking about the world. This article reveals a clear way out of intersectional hell. We have a way forward as long as courageous people ( like the librarian in Toronto) are supported when they act with integrity and are unwilling to bow to the mob. Kudos to her and to the other brave souls that have been willing to take a stand……. they have laid a path for us to follow.
I think part of the reason for individuals and institutions supporting Woke cancel culture and consequences culture is that it is easy virtue signal while our nation is at a crossroads.
There are serious issues that need to be resolved in Canada regarding the cost of living, education, housing, immigration and safe supply. However, they are becoming extremely hard to deal with, such as housing, as the lack of focus on solutions that benefit the majority of Canadians has meant the problem has gotten worse.
Doing the hard work has become too hard for politicians and bureaucrats. Therefore, better to be seen as doing something rather than engaging in the very long difficult process of creating affordable housing.
What used to be the political Left was taken by the misnomered worldview called
Progressivism. The danger comes when the pumped up ideas come crashing down, as they most certainly will. Because they were taken by the unsupportable tenets of “progressivism” and are embarrassed over how easy it was, they will have nowhere to turn. We can only hope they are now beginning to see the victims of this worldview as real hiuman beings who did not deserve the hatred tossed like feces at them from the sheer purity of what used to be “The Left.” Are any of these ideas sustainable? Do they have any foundation in reality? Or ar they just brain-dead ideas from philosophers too full of themselves?
Objective truth really DOES exist, and it tends to be a bully without a care about what you think. Get used to it because It is also the only way out of this mess.
Don't worry. Now that the thought leaders have ruined countless lives by imposing their idiot will on the people, they'll blithely memory hole the whole thing and move on to another crazy idea that will fuck everyone over. The point is not the idea, but the imposition of power. It's gives an orgasm of rightness and certainty.
Great article! Happy to hear I’m not the only one that is sick & tired of all this “progressive” destructive thought control groupthink (identity politics, intersectionality, DEI). That doesn’t mean I’m a dinosaur 🦕 it means I want to see Canadians living Western values (including meritocracy & free speech) and having some self esteem rather than nihilism. There is nothing “progressive” about today’s Left. They are the illiberal Liberals (& NDP). #MadnessOfCrowds
And not all of the old or current left support the idiocy of the Woke left.
The Woke left is pretty good at shouting, canceling people and getting attention. Otherwise known as bullying.
It will be regular Canadians, reasonable conservatives (of which there lots of in Canada), and the remnants of the common sense left that push this Woke BS back into the pits of purgatory where it belongs…lol
Witch hunts are always Necessary when the witches are Uncool People. Now that the torches are starting to burn Cool People, it's time to end the hunt. Always works this way.
Thank Elon Musk for kicking off the resolution to this destructive madness. However, he was just a front end leader of what was always going to be the rational climb back out of the hole we have allowed with our tolerance of the "useful idiots" to wail about. The inevitable correction would come from the realization in the private economy that the campus indoctrination of Theory/woke was making people toxic to the productive workplace culture. For a while corporations in need of talent to support the massive global economic rise from the post Bretton-Woods Global Order had to hire these people. Then COVID following BREXIT and Trump and the business need to return to productive excellence if only to survive. No longer can companies and organizations afford to virtue signal to the bots of grievance ideology... they are laying off those people and refusing to hire them. Thus the industry of higher learning is starting to feel the price pinch of lower perceived value for their expensive services.
I help this along with a list of interview question to help identify the wokesters so there are no mistakes in hiring them.
Here is a partial list:
1. What would you change about your previous job/employers?
2. What businesses and organizations do you currently admire?
3. What values of your previous/current employer most align with yours?
4. We are committed to professional diversity, what does that mean to you?
5. How would you describe your dream job?
6. What qualities do you admire and/or prefer in your manager?
7. What qualities do you admire and/or prefer in your coworkers?
Interesting way of putting it: Canadian tax dollars are funding crime via academic activists.
Canadians likely fund many academic pursuits that could be dangerous in the wrong hands. Our infectious disease scientists don’t release samples in to society (no Wuhan quips please!), our nuclear scientists don’t leave plutonium in parks, and our cybersecurity researchers don’t crash banks and airliners for a bit of weekend fun. Why did progressive academics jump the Ivory fence and bring their critical post-modernism to the streets? No one asked for it. They somehow decided society needed it.
I’d be skeptical that it will implode completely. I’m convinced it’s taken on the strength of a religious belief system that there is no negotiating with and, true to its viral nature of co-opting institutional power, it will retreat and hide only to reappear again in another form.
The real analysis should turn to those who were trusted to keep our institutions strong but instead turned out to be gutless apologists, willing to pledge allegiance to the mob to save their salaries and positions. If there’s ever an inquisition on how the nitpickers did so much damage, it’s those so-called leaders I want in the dock.
This is why I don't pay the slightest bit of attention to the G & M or any MSM for that matter. I'm a millimeter away from unsubscribing and unsupporting you. If you want to discuss further you can email me. I won't discusss it here.
Quite dramatic and deservedly so given that people are not only waking up but speaking up. Repeatedly, and most disturbingly with my own daughter, I've run into the "moral clarity" of the woke, who just won't discuss certain issues, in our case, the belief that men can actually become women. And yet how to blame her when none of our institutions, especially not the CBC or the university she attended, will ever discuss this foundational belief of the modern trans rights movement. It's considered not only a physical given, but a moral imperative. The same goes for a number of serious issues that once would have brought people together but which now divide them. Here's to a saner future for Canada.
I hope that we can maintain a commitment to open discourse on difficult issues, and not lurch to a contrary "moral clarity".
I am not sure how to respond, as I share many of the sediments expressed by Stephen, but also would observe some profound places I do not agree. Trish Wood has started to used the expression "Truth not Tribe" which rings true for me.
I agree with Stephen with respect to wanting people to leave their politics at the boarder, but would observe that the worst offenders in this regard are Zionists, as they are unable to distinguish between Canadian interests, and Israel's interests. They have a complete disregard for the truth, and endlessly repeat things that have been proven to be untrue. In his article he makes references to Ms. Jama and Hamas. I would like to point out the following to Stephen.
1. If Hamas are rapists, then you can kill them. Right? What happens if they are not rapists? Does Stephen know that the Israeli media has raised questions about this, after families of victims have come forward to say their love ones were not raped. I would suggest that he research this.
2. Does Stephen understand that the way that you justify a genocide is to dehumanize the people you want to kill? I suggest that he look in history at genocides and the language used to justify the killing. I suggest that he then compare that language with the language being used today with respect to Palestinians.
The Intercept has just published a piece about the untrue narratives being promoted by the Government of Israel. It includes a section on how the allegations of rape against Hamas are being used to hype up emotion, but cannot be substantiated.
https://theintercept.com/2024/02/07/gaza-israel-netanyahu-propaganda-lies-palestinians/
Disappointed that the pushback against woke ideological extremism is being conflated with advocacy of current Israeli war policy. Many of the staunchest critics of the turn to the far right in Israel are themselves Jewish, like Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté of The Grayzone, leading protestor Lesley J Wood and Naomi Klein who has spoken out on her behalf. You don’t have to agree with all their criticisms to defend their right to be heard. Hamas atrocities are very real but it’s clear that the Netanyahu government are seizing on the crisis to further a longstanding goal of the far right: ethnic cleansing of Gaza and acceleration of settlements in the West Bank, towards a biblical vision of a “Greater Israel”.
This is a very optimistic take that I love to see - my worry is that while the culture at large (and as Marche points out, youth culture in particular) takes a turn away from identity politics, I worry that it will take many years for institutions to catch up.
The current mainstream brand of wokeness was very popular in university life in the 2000s and 2010s. It took about 10 years to reach the mainstream (which was brought on, in large part, by people on these campuses becoming professors and thought leaders in academia). The antisemitism of these people is also reflected clearly in the current leftie discourse around the conflict in Gaza. Will it take 10 years to drain the poison from Canadian institutions? The CBC is one thing, but what about every office that has hired a DEI executive officer or pays hundreds of thousands for quarterly anti-racism trainings, delivered by people who think that harassing Canadian Jews is freedom fighting? I worry that the after effects of these decisions will be felt for a long time, but I hope I’m wrong.
In the meantime, it would be great if Canadian businesses and institutions who are sick and tired of these toxic narratives would take a more public stand on these issues that would translate to hiring sane people who care about building things rather than tearing them down. It feels like a lot of talented, young people are passed over for jobs while the people that are hired in their stead take great pleasure in destroying everything in their path in the name of righteousness. Perhaps moral character should be a consideration in candidate selection.
Thank you for an excellent article that truly gives me hope after the last five despairing years! I am shocked so many baby boomers continue to support the liberals. I am a baby boomer and have had to be very careful around many of my friends who continue to vote liberal. It's a head shaker indeed.
Love this article! Most of our institutions and corporations embraced identity politics because they thought that virtue signaling would pay off. It is becoming evident that this is not the case long term and that most people are fed up with this negative and divisive way of thinking about the world. This article reveals a clear way out of intersectional hell. We have a way forward as long as courageous people ( like the librarian in Toronto) are supported when they act with integrity and are unwilling to bow to the mob. Kudos to her and to the other brave souls that have been willing to take a stand……. they have laid a path for us to follow.
…and follow we must!
I think part of the reason for individuals and institutions supporting Woke cancel culture and consequences culture is that it is easy virtue signal while our nation is at a crossroads.
There are serious issues that need to be resolved in Canada regarding the cost of living, education, housing, immigration and safe supply. However, they are becoming extremely hard to deal with, such as housing, as the lack of focus on solutions that benefit the majority of Canadians has meant the problem has gotten worse.
Doing the hard work has become too hard for politicians and bureaucrats. Therefore, better to be seen as doing something rather than engaging in the very long difficult process of creating affordable housing.
What used to be the political Left was taken by the misnomered worldview called
Progressivism. The danger comes when the pumped up ideas come crashing down, as they most certainly will. Because they were taken by the unsupportable tenets of “progressivism” and are embarrassed over how easy it was, they will have nowhere to turn. We can only hope they are now beginning to see the victims of this worldview as real hiuman beings who did not deserve the hatred tossed like feces at them from the sheer purity of what used to be “The Left.” Are any of these ideas sustainable? Do they have any foundation in reality? Or ar they just brain-dead ideas from philosophers too full of themselves?
Objective truth really DOES exist, and it tends to be a bully without a care about what you think. Get used to it because It is also the only way out of this mess.
I read it in the Globe...boy were there a lot of comments, mostly positive.
Don't worry. Now that the thought leaders have ruined countless lives by imposing their idiot will on the people, they'll blithely memory hole the whole thing and move on to another crazy idea that will fuck everyone over. The point is not the idea, but the imposition of power. It's gives an orgasm of rightness and certainty.
Great article! Happy to hear I’m not the only one that is sick & tired of all this “progressive” destructive thought control groupthink (identity politics, intersectionality, DEI). That doesn’t mean I’m a dinosaur 🦕 it means I want to see Canadians living Western values (including meritocracy & free speech) and having some self esteem rather than nihilism. There is nothing “progressive” about today’s Left. They are the illiberal Liberals (& NDP). #MadnessOfCrowds
And not all of the old or current left support the idiocy of the Woke left.
The Woke left is pretty good at shouting, canceling people and getting attention. Otherwise known as bullying.
It will be regular Canadians, reasonable conservatives (of which there lots of in Canada), and the remnants of the common sense left that push this Woke BS back into the pits of purgatory where it belongs…lol
Witch hunts are always Necessary when the witches are Uncool People. Now that the torches are starting to burn Cool People, it's time to end the hunt. Always works this way.
Ya, my forgiveness level is low.
Thank Elon Musk for kicking off the resolution to this destructive madness. However, he was just a front end leader of what was always going to be the rational climb back out of the hole we have allowed with our tolerance of the "useful idiots" to wail about. The inevitable correction would come from the realization in the private economy that the campus indoctrination of Theory/woke was making people toxic to the productive workplace culture. For a while corporations in need of talent to support the massive global economic rise from the post Bretton-Woods Global Order had to hire these people. Then COVID following BREXIT and Trump and the business need to return to productive excellence if only to survive. No longer can companies and organizations afford to virtue signal to the bots of grievance ideology... they are laying off those people and refusing to hire them. Thus the industry of higher learning is starting to feel the price pinch of lower perceived value for their expensive services.
I help this along with a list of interview question to help identify the wokesters so there are no mistakes in hiring them.
Here is a partial list:
1. What would you change about your previous job/employers?
2. What businesses and organizations do you currently admire?
3. What values of your previous/current employer most align with yours?
4. We are committed to professional diversity, what does that mean to you?
5. How would you describe your dream job?
6. What qualities do you admire and/or prefer in your manager?
7. What qualities do you admire and/or prefer in your coworkers?
Interesting way of putting it: Canadian tax dollars are funding crime via academic activists.
Canadians likely fund many academic pursuits that could be dangerous in the wrong hands. Our infectious disease scientists don’t release samples in to society (no Wuhan quips please!), our nuclear scientists don’t leave plutonium in parks, and our cybersecurity researchers don’t crash banks and airliners for a bit of weekend fun. Why did progressive academics jump the Ivory fence and bring their critical post-modernism to the streets? No one asked for it. They somehow decided society needed it.
I’d be skeptical that it will implode completely. I’m convinced it’s taken on the strength of a religious belief system that there is no negotiating with and, true to its viral nature of co-opting institutional power, it will retreat and hide only to reappear again in another form.
The real analysis should turn to those who were trusted to keep our institutions strong but instead turned out to be gutless apologists, willing to pledge allegiance to the mob to save their salaries and positions. If there’s ever an inquisition on how the nitpickers did so much damage, it’s those so-called leaders I want in the dock.
The CBC is already “killed off” with 4.4 percent viewership. I wonder what percentage of that 4.4 percent “love” the CBC?
This is why I don't pay the slightest bit of attention to the G & M or any MSM for that matter. I'm a millimeter away from unsubscribing and unsupporting you. If you want to discuss further you can email me. I won't discusss it here.
I just cancelled my subscription.